Pure half-remembered bad dream vibes! Unsung 70s horror classic on the big screen!

Visiting sleepy Californian coastal town Point Dume in order to look for her artist father, Arletty (Marianna Hill) soon begins to suspect something amiss beyond the local hostility. After meeting Thom (Michael Greer), a louche nomad in the company of two hedonistic hippy drifters (Joy Bang and Anitra Ford), and claiming to ‘collect folk tales', the quartet begin to uncover the town’s dark history, with its stories of 'the dark stranger' who arrived from the sea, and find they have unwittingly washed up for the dreaded night of the ‘blood moon’.

Made by a couple of SCA film school graduates in the early 70s (peers of the New-Hollywood set) and slipped out into the world incomplete (to their vision) a few years later, Messiah (also known as Dead People, and a whole host of other daft titles) made quiet impact on its initial release, but as we all know you can’t keep a good nightmare down. Its peculiar atmosphere and eerie Lovecraftian dread must have percolated in the minds of those who saw it, and by the video era it had amassed a small but enthusiastic cult following, despite its bottom of the barrel crappy transfer VHS status. Fast forward to now and we finally have a restoration which does justice to its incredible set designs and creepy crepuscular vistas.  A beguiling collusion of American Gothic and European alienation, the Messiah of Evil has arrived home! Join us on all-hallows eve and bathe in the light of the blood moon.

RIYL: Carnival of Souls, Night of the Living Dead, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, lonely coastal towns at night.